Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Case Study

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy's emergence began during the 1960's when Aaron Beck, a psychoanalytic therapist, became interested in how his clients' automatic thoughts about a stimuli created emotional responses. (ref) This early work developed by means of successfully combining both behavioural and cognitive therapeutic approaches (ref) and over the last few decades Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) has adapted and expanded into a family of allied techniques (ref) informing a type of present based, structured, short term psychotherapy(ref) working alongside the client to identify and appraise potential faulty assumptions and beliefs and teaching clients coping strategies to enable them to manage their troubles. (ref) As defined by Emery
This involves designing various specific learning experiences to teach clients how to ultimately identify and alter underlying thoughts, beliefs, assumptions and schemas which lead to faulty thinking patterns (Kendall & Bemis, 1983). Treatment is based on a collaborative, psychoeducational approach with the client playing an active role in the process of setting goals and making decisions about which problems to undertake first. The therapist assists the client in exploring thoughts, beliefs and behaviours that may be contributing to their distress and employs behavioural therapy techniques to modify resulting behaviour. Clients are tasked with independently completing homework assignments to practice and master the learned skills outside of therapy while also enabling them to generalise these skills to their everyday life (Kazantzis and Lampropoulos 2002). At the therapies conclusion the client has learned specific skills to help clients to become aware of and challenge “negative automatic thoughts” and “irrational beliefs” about themselves or their experiences and as a result transforming their perspective of a
Outcome measurements using response rates was discussed by Loerinc (2015) when examining the clinical effectiveness of treatments for anxiety disorders. He found that despite response rates being an invaluable means for evaluating outcome, they varied significantly depending on the properties used to define them. Consequently, the accuracy of research and meta-analysis studies may have been hindered, accordingly he has called for a standardised criteria in response rates. A further concern surrounding the research supporting CBT is highlighted in Cujipers (2012) meta analysis of 115 studies of adult depression where the analysis found evidence of the efficacy of CBT but also discovered a high publication bias. In controlling difference in effect size depending on the quality of the study, they found it to be significantly lower in higher quality studies. It showed no indication that CBT was more or less effective than other therapies or medication although when combined it was more effective than medication alone. Further investigation by Dreissen (2015) also showed evidence of publication bias leading to an overestimation of the